The queer black stick had fallen, and was crumbling away, but it had crushed the last flickering flame.  Miranda’s fire, like her hopes, had turned to ashes.

She walked the floor restlessly, seeking vainly for a pathway out of her troubles, until she was exhausted.  Then she slept a troubled sleep until daylight.

It was a little comfort to get breakfast for Ephrum’s wife and boys, although she was so heavy-hearted.

She went across the field to Eben Curtis’s to get a bit of fresh fish:  Eben had been fishing the day before.

Eben, who was a friendly young man, looked at her pityingly as he put the’ fish into her basket.  As she was turning away in unwonted silence, he was moved to say, “I wouldn’t take it so hard if I was you, Miss Daggett.  You’re well rid of such a scamp.  And maybe they’ll catch him and get the money back.  La, now! you don’t say you hain’t heard?” he exclaimed at sight of Miranda’s astonished face.  “They most generally do get the news up to the poor-house.”  Eben lifted his hat and ran his fingers through his hair with a mingling of sympathy and pleasure in being the first to impart important news.  “He’s cleared out, the book-agent has,—­got all the money he could of folks without giving ’em any books; and folks say he got some of you.  He’s been in jail for playing the same trick before; and folks think he’ll be caught this time.”

“Oh, it’s a mistake!  He’ll come back,” said Miranda dejectedly, after a moment’s thought.

“Well, he isn’t very likely to, because”—­here Eben turned his head aside in embarrassment—­“because he’s got a wife and family over to Olneyville.”

Radiant delight overspread Miranda’s countenance.

“I hope they’ll just let him go,” she said.  “He’s welcome to what money he’s got of mine,—­more’n welcome.”  And homeward she went with a light step.

“Women are queer,” mused Eben, as he returned to his fish-cleaning.  “She’s lost her beau and her money, and she’s tickled to death.”

“I declare, you look just as fresh and young and happy as you did fifteen years ago!” said the widow, with a touch of envy, as they sat down at the cheerful breakfast-table.

Miranda touched Mrs. Bemis’s arm as she came out of the meeting-house the next Sunday, Ephraim’s boys, preternaturally smooth of hair and shining of face, beside her.

“If it ain’t perfane to say it.  Mis’ Bemis, I feel as if I’d got through the eye of that needle clear into the kingdom of heaven.”

The poor-mistress commented upon the saying in the midst of her numerous family that night:  “She’s got that selfish, tempery woman saddled onto her for life, and she’ll work her fingers to the bone for them boys, that ain’t anything to her, and won’t be apt to amount to much,—­for there never was one of them Spencers that did,—­and she calls that the kingdom of heaven!”

“It’s jest as I always told you,” remarked Cap’n ’Kiah placidly.  “It’s all owin’ to the p’int of view.”